Cuckoo at JNU
Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi is often parodied for being a hothouse for students in severe specs, scarves, kurtas or salwars, jholis in ethnic prints, and long hair (for men) or short hair (for women), preaching socialism long after its expire-by date.
I’m not sure how broadly the stereotype applies, but a quick visit makes it look like the twin of UC Santa Cruz, a campus so leftist it makes Berkeley look like Princeton. Both are campuses of low-rise buildings hidden among forestation. Both are spread out across hilltops with bus and bike lanes winding through brush and little sense of urbanness. JNU in particular feels like a little jungle hidden inside a major city. Both have strident banners damning capitalism and imperialism plastered across their central buildings.
The JNU campus has clotheslines stretched across trees and little campsites hidden in the foliage. Yesterday evening, students were on day one of a hunger strike to let college electricians unionize. One large banner supported Naxalites while a smaller one dissented. Globalization is apparently Satan and socialism is apparently the way forward rather than a thoroughly discredited economic relic.
I admire the passion, but not the stupidity — no man works harder for another than for himself. The prosperity flowing through India right now owes everything to Manmohan Singh’s term as finance minister and very little to Nehru.
Ah well, they’re still young. The scary thing isn’t college students in full-throated socialist roar. The scary thing is these folks growing up, minds unchanged, and running the government or blowing up trains.
on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007, 12:24 pm in Economics, Photos, Politics, Travel › 
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Ever met anyone from JNU? they’re totally brainwashed into this socialism bullshit and really agressive about it.
Total turnoff.
Surreal shit. And to think this is 2007!
Yes this is 2007, mr varma, its not only neon, billboard ads that you are gonna get to see, and thank god for that, we need a bit of reckless senselss dissent especially when there is senseless commercialisation taking place at the same time.
Some people are caught in a time wrap. People are always ’slaves’ to what they think they know.
“Surreal shit” and “time warp” are two excellent ways of describing this. Was there even one poster on campus denouncing Naxalite violence? I wonder what they think of China.
I think the fraction of kids from JNU that actually end up blowing up shit is vanishingly small. I am sure almost all of those kids come from middle to upper middle class families, who can afford to do crap like like this. You’d be hard pressed to actually find them doing something more than the symbolic gesture (hunger strike) or attend a symposium. For real political action go the institutions where the fight for control of the Student Unions are physical, bloody and sometimes fatal (Kerala and Tamil Nadu are the states that I am familiar with). The word that comes to mind here is dilettante.
Not to make excuses or anything but I am sure the roster of the Maoists are almost exclusively peasantry who traditionally have had the shit beat out of them by the landed gentry. Land reform in Kerala was a bloody fight.
These kids need to chill out and grab a coke from the nearest McDonalds.
Great post. Thanks.
One minor quip, however, I have is with this remark - “The prosperity flowing through India right now owes everything to Manmohan Singh’s term as finance minister and very little to Nehru.”
If one man can be credited for India’s current economic trajectory, it should/would be Narsimha Rao, who was the PM at the time.
Any guy with a graduate degree in Economics could have pinpointed what needed to be done in order to alleviate the 91 foreign reserve crisis, however, what was next to impossible was to provide the political will and cover for the policies, that needed to be enacted asap.
ah, the ignorance: India owes everything to Manmohan Singh.. For a deeper understanding of the Indian Economy pick up its history and look how, where and by whom the capacity building took place…
>The prosperity flowing through India right now owes everything to Manmohan Singh’s term as finance minister and very little to Nehru.
This is too difficult to digest, and too far fetched by any standards.
I say we’ve got to find a way to put all those who think that way in a common place so that we know where they are. A barbed wire fence, with dogs, machine gun posts and round-the-clock surveillance to ensure that they don’t get out…
But seriously, can’t believe why the taxpayer is paying for all this.
A contrarian view (of sorts): Yes, the JNU stuff is “surreal shit” and these “dilettantes” do seem to be stuck in a “time warp”… but aren’t there many campuses in the US/ Europe/ Latin America where you’d find something similar… yes/ no?
Nehruvian/Indira Gandhian socialism threw the Indian economy into reverse.
Of course, like Santa Cruz. Both colleges and M.I.A. regularly name-check the PLO. But one difference is the banners aren’t permanent fixtures, they tend to be present during rallies and not stuck on central buildings. Maybe the building in the photos is the student center.
owes everything to Manmohan Singh’s term as finance minister and very little to Nehru.
Manish, Manish,
Manmohan Singh did not prop out of blue. He was confidant of Mrs. Gandhi. Before he was finance minister, he was chairman planning commission, and reserve bank [,and also Professor @ JNU]. As people have pointed out that N. Rao govt. was forced by IMF to take some tentative opening of economy to avoid foreign reserve crisis and loan default, and he (PM Singh now) had the gumption to go with the recommendations of IMF. Then even BJP did a lot of opening of economy. Most of all Y2K, back room boys like TCS (Tata Consultancy Services).
That is a debate for another day, whether India was ready open markets in 1947. Sure it was ready in 80s.
JNU is a marxist/ maoist campus, but has produced some well very known alum. In social sciences, they are one of the top school in India. A lot of civil servants (IAS/ IFS officers) enroll in JNU while they prepare for civil service exams.
There has never been Nehru love there….you are missing the history. It has even produced top communist party leaders in India. JNU critics believe that they caught in time warp, and does not contribute to new changes in India, that might be the case for JNU but it still has a place in India.
It is their thing……..socialism, che, naxalbari love………..
owes everything to Manmohan Singh’s term as finance minister and very little to Nehru.
Manish, Manish,
Manmohan Singh did not prop out of blue. He was close confidant of Mrs. Gandhi. Before he was finance minister, he was chairman planning commission, and reserve bank [,and also Professor @ JNU]. As people have pointed out that N. Rao govt. was forced by IMF to take some tentative opening of economy to avoid foreign reserve crisis and loan default, and he (PM Singh now) had the gumption to go with the recommendations of IMF. Then even BJP did a lot of opening of economy. Most of all Y2K, back room boys like TCS (Tata Consultancy Services).
That is a debate for another day, whether India was ready open markets in 1947. Sure it was ready in 80s.
JNU is a marxist/ maoist campus, but has produced some well very known alum. In social sciences, they are one of the top school in India. A lot of civil servants (IAS/ IFS officers) enroll in JNU while they prepare for civil service exams.
There has never been Nehru love there….you are missing the history. It has even produced top communist party leaders in India. JNU critics believe that they caught in time warp, and does not contribute to new changes in India, that might be the case for JNU but it still has a place in India.
It is their thing……..socialism, che, naxalbari love………..
owes everything to Manmohan Singh’s term as finance minister and very little to Nehru.
Manish, Manish,
Manmohan Singh did not prop out of blue. He was a close confidant of Mrs. Gandhi. Before he was finance minister, he was chairman planning commission, and reserve bank [,and also Professor @ JNU]. As people have pointed out that N. Rao govt. was forced by IMF to take some tentative opening of economy to avoid foreign reserve crisis and loan default, and he (PM Singh now) had the gumption to go with the recommendations of IMF. Then even BJP did a lot of opening of economy. Most of all Y2K, back room boys like TCS (Tata Consultancy Services). All these Silicon Valley - IIT/ Engineering College graduates were waiting to jump on outsourcing bandwagon.
That is a debate for another day, whether India was ready open markets in 1947. Sure it was ready in 80s. Was China like opening of economy even possible in 40s? Korea and all were shielded by Marshall Plan.
JNU is a marxist/ maoist campus, but has produced some well very known alum. In social sciences, they are one of the top school in India. A lot of civil servants (IAS/ IFS officers) enroll in JNU while they prepare for civil service exams.
There has never been Nehru love there….you are missing the history. It has even produced top communist party leaders in India. JNU critics believe that they caught in time warp, and does not contribute to new changes in India, that might be the case for JNU but it still has a place in India.
It is their thing……..socialism, che, and all that
owes everything to Manmohan Singh’s term as finance minister and very little to Nehru.
Manish, Manish,
Manmohan Singh did not prop out of blue. He was a close confidant of Mrs. Gandhi. Before he was finance minister, he was chairman planning commission, and reserve bank [,and also Professor @ JNU]. As people have pointed out that N. Rao govt. was forced by IMF to take some tentative opening of economy to avoid foreign reserve crisis and loan default, and he (PM Singh now) had the gumption to go with the recommendations of IMF. Then even BJP did a lot of opening of economy. Most of all Y2K, back room boys like TCS (Tata Consultancy Services). All these Silicon Valley - IIT/ Engineering College graduates were waiting to jump on outsourcing bandwagon.
That is a debate for another day, whether India was ready open markets in 1947. Sure it was ready in 80s. Was China like opening of economy even possible in 40s? Korea and all were shielded by Marshall Plan.
JNU is a marxist/ maoist campus, but has produced some well very known alum. In social sciences, they are one of the top school in India. A lot of civil servants (IAS/ IFS officers) enroll in JNU while they prepare for civil service exams, and that is their biggest contribution and legacy.
There has never been Nehru love there, and does not figure in Nehruvian/ fabian socialism….you are missing the history. It has even produced top communist party leaders in India.
JNU critics believe that they caught in time warp, and does not contribute to new changes in India, that might be the case for JNU but it still has a place in India.
It is summer of love in delhi
Manmohan Singh did not prop out of blue. He was a close confidant of Mrs. Gandhi. Before he was finance minister, he was chairman planning commission, and reserve bank [,and also Professor @ JNU]. As people have pointed out that N. Rao govt. was forced by IMF to take some tentative opening of economy to avoid foreign reserve crisis and loan default, and he (PM Singh now) had the gumption to go with the recommendations of IMF. Then even BJP did a lot of opening of economy. Most of all Y2K, and back room boys like TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) did the leg work. All these Silicon Valley - IIT/ Engineering College graduates were waiting to jump on outsourcing bandwagon.
That is a debate for another day, whether India was ready open markets in 1947. Sure it was ready in 80s. Was China like opening of economy even possible in 40s? Korea and all were shielded by Marshall Plan.
JNU is a marxist/ maoist campus, but has produced some well very known alum. In social sciences, they are one of the top school in India. A lot of civil servants (IAS/ IFS officers) enroll in JNU while they prepare for civil service exams, and that is their biggest contribution and legacy.
There has never been Nehru love there, and does not figure in Nehruvian/ fabian socialism….you are missing the history. It has even produced top communist party leaders in India.
JNU critics believe that they caught in time warp, and does not contribute to new changes in India, that might be the case for JNU but it still has a place in India.
It is their thing……..socialism, che, and all that with summer of love in delhi
owes everything to Manmohan Singh’s term as finance minister and very little to Nehru.
Manish, Manish,
Manmohan Singh did not prop out of blue. He was a close confidant of Mrs. Gandhi. Before he was finance minister, he was chairman planning commission, and reserve bank [,and also Professor @ JNU]. As people have pointed out that N. Rao govt. was forced by IMF to take some tentative opening of economy to avoid foreign reserve crisis and loan default, and he (PM Singh now) had the gumption to go with the recommendations of IMF. Then even BJP did a lot of opening of economy. Most of all Y2K, back room boys like TCS (Tata Consultancy Services). All these Silicon Valley - IIT/ Engineering College graduates were waiting to jump on outsourcing bandwagon.
That is a debate for another day, whether India was ready open markets in 1947. Sure it was ready in 80s. Was China like opening of economy even possible in 40s? Korea and all were shielded by Marshall Plan.
JNU is a socialist campus, but has produced some well very known alum. In social sciences, they are one of the top school in India. A lot of civil servants (IAS/ IFS officers) enroll in JNU while they prepare for civil service exams, and that is their biggest contribution and legacy.
There has never been Nehru love there, and does not figure in Nehruvian/ fabian socialism….you are missing the history. It has even produced top communist party leaders in India.
JNU critics believe that they caught in time warp, and does not contribute to new changes in India, that might be the case for JNU but it still has a place in India.
It is their thing……..socialism, che, and all that with summer of love in delhi
owes everything to Manmohan Singh’s term as finance minister and very little to Nehru.
Manish, Manish,
Manmohan Singh did not prop out of blue. He was a close confidant of Mrs. Gandhi. Before he was finance minister, he was chairman planning commission, and reserve bank [,and also Professor @ JNU]. As people have pointed out that N. Rao govt. was forced by IMF to take some tentative opening of economy to avoid foreign reserve crisis and loan default, and he (PM Singh now) had the gumption to go with the recommendations of IMF. Then even BJP did a lot of opening of economy. Most of all Y2K, back room boys like TCS (Tata Consultancy Services). All these Silicon Valley - IIT/ Engineering College graduates were waiting to jump on outsourcing bandwagon.
That is a debate for another day, whether India was ready open markets in 1947. Sure it was ready in 80s. Was China like opening of economy even possible in 40s? Korea and all were shielded by Marshall Plan.
JNU is a marxist/ maoist campus, but has produced some well very known alum. In social sciences, they are one of the top school in India. A lot of civil servants (IAS/ IFS officers) enroll in JNU while they prepare for civil service exams, and that is their biggest contribution and legacy.
There has never been Nehru love there, and does not figure in Nehruvian/ fabian socialism….you are missing the history. It has even produced top communist party leaders in India.
JNU critics believe that they caught in time warp, and does not contribute to new changes in India, that might be the case for JNU but it still has a place in India.
It is their thing……..socialism, che, and all that with summer of love in delhi
JNU has produced some well very known alum. In social sciences, they are one of the top school in India. A lot of civil servants (IAS/ IFS officers) enroll in JNU while they prepare for civil service exams, and that is their biggest contribution and legacy.
There has never been Nehru love there, and does not figure in Nehruvian/ fabian socialism….you are missing the history. It has even produced top communist party leaders in India.
JNU critics believe that they caught in time warp, and does not contribute to new changes in India, that might be the case for JNU but it still has a place in India.
It is their thing……..socialism, che, and all that with summer of love in delhi
In social sciences, they are one of the top school in India. A lot of civil servants enroll in JNU while they prepare for civil service exams, and that is their biggest contribution and legacy.
There has never been Nehru love there, and does not figure in Nehruvian/ fabian socialism….you are missing the history. It has even produced top communist party leaders in India.
JNU critics believe that they caught in time warp, and does not contribute to new changes in India, that might be the case for JNU but it still has a place in India.
It is their thing……..socialism, che, and all that with summer of love in delhi
JNU is a marxist/ maoist campus, but has produced some well very known alum. In social sciences, they are one of the top school in India. A lot of civil servants (IAS/ IFS officers) enroll in JNU while they prepare for civil service exams, and that is their biggest contribution and legacy.
Manish, I broke my comments in three parts, and decimated it.
JNU has never been a Nehruvian bastion. It has produced some very prominent Communist Party leaders.
I think it has a place in Indian thought.
JNU’s colorful history
From the wiki entry there are 2 maoist leaders, but for the 2 maoists there are thousands of babus grinding out a living, paying taxes like the rest of us (High commissions,newspapers, IAS, etc) working for the man.
India’s recent prosperity did not come with one change in leadership. It is like pretending that Ronald Reagan caused the fall of the Soviet Union.
But seriously, can’t believe why the taxpayer is paying for all this.
Nitin, the taxpayer does pay for the education of students not only at JNU but also, say, the IITs. And the posters you see above are paid for by the students themselves.
Both Sitaram Yechury and Prakash Karat are JNu alumni
Don’t be so quick as to deem this students as stupid.
I’m less scared of unchanged minds blowing up trains than the changed minds blowing up entire countries simply to preserve their “prosperity”.
:)
To be in equilibrium, a balance is needed. Both sides are fighting hard.
I strongly believe JNU should be Shut down completely.
We can convert the campus into something else which offers courses in Enterpreneurship and
capital Management instead of this idiotic theory of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism.
If Marxism is still being taught in this place I consider it to be a serious waste of time.
The need of the hour is to generate Enterpreneurs and leaders who will lead India in the right direction
and not drive her into the Abyss of Socialism/Communism.
For once we need to remove this open ulcer on the Banks of the Yamuna.
We do not need a University churning out cretins who think they are Karl Liebknechts and Rosa Luxembourgs.
We DO NOT NEED ANY MORE ROSAS AND KARLS.
We need Narayan Murthys and Azim Premjis and Satish Dhawans and KasturiRangans
I have had run into several JNU graduates who cannot defend their idiotic and out dated theories and run away when
presented with the historically accurate spectacular failures of Socialism.
50 years of un-bridled Marxism is enough. We 900 million Indians can take no more.
For FREEDOM, DEMOCRACY AND DIGNITY OF THE COMMON MAN
NEVER AGAIN MARXISM.
MILLIONS OF ITS HAPLESS VICTIMS ALREADY ADMONISH US FROM THEIR GRAVES.
Vishnu Sharma
NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC WORKERS PARTY.
if u are dead it’s no right of your to call the alive over-active. so socialism doesnt work. does survival of the fittest. it’s not about anti-market. it’s about letting evryone have a say in the market. so blind u are nd u throw stones cuz i can see. even if agree the way of thinking of “left” in JNU doesnt world in the “real” world. but atleast i’m willing to debate that out with u…
please do come to jnu we’ll have a nice chat over this at ganga dhaba…
awareness bad…. then what…
ah. it’s always wonderful to come across communist (ism) witch hunting. don’t get me wrong guys, i am with you people. i don’t like the communist either. (accidently i am also a lead member of Anti-Communist League at JNU.) BUT your logics and comments really beats our rhetorics.
yes agreed Communism is a powerful political force here. (to be just to them it isn’t just a poputical but also cultural and social force for them. the famous or rather the infamous as you will please combination of the kurta, jeans and jhola is almost an uniform for the Commies) BUT so what ? they (rather we) are University Students, they are indian nationals. they too have right to any ideological leaning that are not any social. so what is this hoopla about ? they students have a right to have they viewpoints. they might differ from your but that necessarily does not mean they are evil (as you would make us believe). and what evil they do ? paint posters and paste them on walls (not just on student centers but on all the schools , the adiministration block building, on hostel wall, every where ) But so what ? they students here, it is their milieu and they have the right to paint the walls as they want. they don’t force anyone to put them up. they go on procession against the US war on iraq? is that a crime. (oh so when they romanticised the US college protests against Veitnam War, it was all so poetic) they protest against Singur killings. they protest against delay in the adminstration to allot students their hostel rooms. sometimes they go overboard and protest against everything america. But so what? they are not some gangs waiting to turn anarchy on the world.
i am sorry to inform those who thought otherwise that JNU from 1969 (when it was established) to this day no ex-student of JNU has even been involved in blowing up trains. though both Sitaram Yechury and Prakash Karat are JNU alumni yet till i last checked the newspaper they weren’t either involved any blowing up train schemes.
and for the question as too why they taxpayers are paying for this, well because not just Sitaram Yechery and Prakash Karat but also people such as Muzaffar Alam, Abhijit Banerjee, Maneka Gandhi, Dr. Bhagirath Prasad, C. Raja Mohan, and many others have studied here. it is beyond the scope of my comment to indulge in why JNU is the intellectual hub and why JNU is ranked high among universities in India and also among Asian universities. you might as well google it and find out.
they aren’t the much romantisiced rebels of the movies (with leather jackets and Harvey Davidsons) but lanky young people wearing kurta and jeans and carrying a jhola.
is the problem with the ‘rebel’ part. people have become so intolerable with any other way of thought. people can’t accept anyone who does not follow their part (the always the perfect one? )
i think communist students are dumb to a great extend. but i certainly can not accept your logic that JNU is inflicted with an epidemic. (as you would have us believe). “be scared. be very scared. the communism may attack a university near you.”
thank you.
[i'm currently a masters student at JNU. i am studying at the Centre for English Studies at the School of languages, literature and cultural studies(quite a fancy name you might accuse but they actually teach all that at JNU and they teach very well- why don't audit one of the courses and check).]
true that Nehru was socialist leaning, but pro-industry, pro-science, anti-superstitition, and pro-cosmopolitanism in a visceral way that none of our leaders have been since. remember then, the USSR had done some pretty impressive economic stuff pretty rapidly. their GDP shot up rapidly — economic progress had never been that radically fast in history. besides, other measures of human development: education, health, and scientific prowess, were quite impressive as well. you’re being ahistorical/presentist in your analysis; at Nehru’s time, socialism was a pretty plausible way to attain economic growth and reasonable standards of living (eg in Eastern Europe). besides, Nehru being an anti-colonial leader was wary of close alignment with the West, and didn’t want to risk national autonomy in international affairs during the cold war.
you’re right — license raj, political-industrial cronyism, the extreme politicization of the unions — all that did make India suffer in the long run. but as such, nehru’s vision for india in terms of modernization, ambition, scale, and humanity has been unparalleled in modern indian history. his assessment of socialism was wrong, but his idea of a humane and democratic and self-determining and scientific nation was pretty damn near liberal(as in classical liberalism) as one can be. i’m the biggest cheerleader for liberalization, but as you know, that happened from a position of weakness in ‘91, and i wonder, how much of it was done by choice by either PVN Rao or Singh. The IMF wasn’t exactly laissez faire in that situation, was it?
i think ramachandra guha’s work on nehru may be worth reading. it will temper your criticism a bit, and supply more context about nehru’s regard for socialism, and the (limited) successes of socialism in the USSR. i find americans (again, this is not specifically dirented at you, manish) to be especially recalcitrant about this; but the rise of russia is an example worth studying (not emulating, of course).